Mission de Asis - Santa Clara University, CA

Site Details

Nestled within the expansive Santa Clara University campus lies the Mission Santa Clara de Asis. The mission was destroyed by a flood in 1779, but was quickly rebuild two years later. Many Native Americans were converted to Catholicism during this time, however most of these natives died from various diseases that were introduced by newcomers. This event, as well as the battles against the Catholic church, leads many to believe that the ghosts of native peoples, as well as fallen soldiers and missionaries, roam the grounds.

Personal Experiences

The Mission, thankfully, was fairly empty during our investigation. The staggering amount of ornate religious decorations, statues, paintings, and sculptures left us in a state of awe. It's easy to see why the dimly-lit Mission is so highly revered as a place of sanctuary and worship. We noted no unusual K2 hits within the building itself, however we got a few unexplainable spikes outside on the lawn. The K2 fluctuations were interesting since they seemed to roam the area and we could "follow" them around the grounds. Also to note is that this location was the former Padres Dormitory, which is now just a park-like setting outside the Mission. No EVPs were captured during the duration of the investigation, unfortunately. This may a sign of residual activity.

However, we feel that we may have caught something unusual on our video recorder and on camera. The photo (shown below), as a very bright light artifact in the top right section. It's not a streak of light, in that there are stubs on each side. There is also chromatic aberration with the right side having a pinkish hue and the left a more orangish hue. No other photographs ever taken have had this anomaly. A simple point-and-shoot camera was used with a flash. We tried to re-create this image by putting a piece of hair in front of the camera, shooting upwards, and couldn't get anything similar to it. Dust on the sensor would show up as a dark spot (usually circular). If there was an object of light in front of the camera, it had to be traveling very, very fast to leave a light trail at that ISO setting. Also, there were a lot of dust orbs at Mission, but only at the Sanctuary location. You can see them in the photos below. The camcorder aberration supports what was possibly captured on camera. While panning the Sanctuary area, what appears to be a streak of light flashed quickly across the screen.

Given the roaming EMF fluctuations and the unexplained visual anomalies, we will need to do further investigations at this location to determine whether or not it is truly haunted.